


Genesis 1:2

by fadeoutra



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A very short take I hope to add onto later, Falling Angels, Gen, Lucifer's flood, Pre-Garden of Eden, Technically pre-everything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 09:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20405608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeoutra/pseuds/fadeoutra
Summary: Before the apocalypse, before all of humanity, before even light itself, there was simply the fall.





	Genesis 1:2

For those who’ve read the introductory verses of the Bible, whether out of idle curiosity or of religious due diligence, there is the common assumption that no time at all passed between the two verses known as Genesis 1:1 and 1:3. For those who have either forgotten said passages or never read them in the first place, let them be known as follows:

_Genesis 1:1_  
_In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth._

_Genesis 1:3_  
_And God said, Let there be light: and there was light._

While it is certainly true that no time at all passed between them, it’s not in the sense most tend to assume. The assumption is that these two events occurred as one singular event; that God created the heaven and the earth, and immediately after doing so, then created light.

This assumption is patently false. The only reason no time at all passed between these events is that time itself had simply not been _invented_ yet, therefore no such thing could pass. The concept of a time when time didn’t exist must be nothing short of incomprehensible to a being that has spent its entire conscious life experiencing the passage of time, so let it be said that, to one such being, the gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:3 would have felt like an eternity, or at least the kind of eternity one feels when closely watching a clock for half an eternity.

What exists in this period of time, or rather a period lacking time, is Genesis 1:2, a passage considered inconsequential even among some of history’s greatest scholars, though it may very well be the most significant verse in all the Book of Genesis. It reads as follows:

_Genesis 1:2_  
_And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep._  
_And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters._

It was during the event of this passage that a great number of mutinous angels briefly resembled a shower of shooting stars as they fell from Third Heaven and went crashing down to First. It was then that First Heaven, also known as the earth, was transformed from what God had intended into an unrecognizable void when the first of the falling angels slammed into its surface with such celestial force that the face of it was blackened by the impact. Further and further the impact spread, darker than pitch, the very blackest thing in all creation, until it wrapped around and enveloped the whole of the world. What had once been form became formless, and the very fabric of matter itself churned like an unholy storm.

The other angels followed at similarly unfathomable speeds. First Heaven shuddered with each collision, though none rendered it so abysmal as the first. The brilliant light that flared from them as they fell through the vastness of space vanished once they struck that calamitous surface, but the light didn’t vanish from sight alone. It vanished entirely from the stratum of First Heaven as though erased from reality, as though such a thing could never have existed in the first place.

Darkness fell upon the face of the deep.

Each of the angels was screaming. Some bellowed cries more forcefully than others, and some uttered shrieks or sobs rather than full-bellied howls, but all issued a scream in one form or another that blended into a dissonance of suffering as together they experienced what would come to be known as pain. In truth, pain was not something that had been created by the Almighty until the moment of impact of the first fallen angel, and once it came to be, it was by far the worst of God’s creations.

One writhing angel in particular would later remark that he didn’t have time to ruminate over his own turbulent falling, as all pain from that was quickly lost in the pain of what he’d landed in.

The face of the deep had managed to reshape itself, but only just. All those atoms had only moments ago come crashing back together to form proper matter once more, a violent act of physics generating in massive quantities what was known to the cosmos as heat and energy.

In other words, the angel was thrashing in a pool of murky liquid that boiled so ferociously it would’ve dissolved him in seconds, if he’d just been so lucky. Sulfur, it was called, a substance God had already introduced as an essential element to the universe, and though it was not normally this black in color, here in the darkened deep it became as pitch as the world itself. It soaked deeply into the angel’s clothes and wings, and excruciated him as it did. He clutched for anything, anything at all with his trembling, burning hands, and he prayed for it all to end, though his prayers were now doomed to forever fall on deaf ears.

His anguished cries mixed with those of his fellow fallen angels as they, too, were engulfed by the scorching black sea, and yet out of the cacophony he recognized one distinct wailing above all the rest. This one single cry rang out across the vast expanse as if emitted by the very world beneath them.

It was the scream of Lucifer, a deafening bellow of outrage, that reverberated from deep down below, for he’d struck so much further into the earth than all the rest. So unspeakably terrible was the sound that it shook the angels more than even their own pain. None believed such a thing could ever have existed in heaven’s domain, and only then did they realize that on earth is not as such in heaven.

The angels anguished, and some distance away, the Spirit of God lingered upon the face of the waters.


End file.
